Terra's Garden
Monthly Column by Terra Hangen

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” Chinese proverb

The cooing from mourning doves sounds like a soft note from heaven, as the afternoon sun lowers in the sky, and warm breezes ripple along my garden plants and tree branches. Other birds add their chirps and songs, and a trill and a flash of red against black advertises the arrival of a self confident male redwing blackbird.

Gardens are ideal tapestries for dreaming by birds and by gardeners, and tremendously enhanced by bird songs and surprising epiphanies of splashes of green and red feathers. Plant a garden with fruits and nuts that birds find tasty, and birds will discover it; that is guaranteed. I agree with Abram L. Urban when he wrote “Poor indeed is the garden in which birds find no homes.”

Recent scientific reports show a disturbing decline in songbird numbers in the past forty years. To help our bird population rebound to healthy levels, you can plant to feed and shelter them in your garden.

Plant flowers and trees and shrubs that garden birds use as a gourmet cafeteria and hotel with room service, and they will repay you with songs and entertaining antics, and by chowing down on insects that eat your plants.

Tops on the list to plant for birds are all plants that provide seeds or berries or nuts. Flowers that produce seeds that birds eat include sunflower, zinnia, marigold, aster, cosmos, snapdragon, coreopsis and purple coneflower. Be sure to not pick all the flowers; allow many flowers to go to seed. Ornamental grasses like feather grass (Stipa) and fountain grass (Pennisetum) produce seeds for birds. Purple fountain grass grows in 2 clumps in my front yard, and its graceful stems wave in every breeze, and are the source of compliments from passers-by.

Add plants that provide nuts and berries in all four seasons. Elderberry, flowering dogwood (scarlet berries in fall), wax myrtle (also called bayberry), mulberry, black berries and blueberries are bird magnets. For spring and summer bird feasts, the small juicy fruits of the elderberry are favored by as many as 120 bird species, and sunflowers are prized by sparrows, cardinals, jays, mourning doves, gold finches, purple finches and more.

Wax myrtle female plants have berries that attract many birds (Northern flicker, Tree swallow, Towhees, Warblers), only if a male plant is nearby so check with your nursery and plant both male and female wax myrtles. High bush blueberry attracts 30 species of birds including Eastern bluebird, Scarlet tanager and Northern cardinal.

I planted a graceful weeping mulberry tree ten years ago, that dependably yields super sweet fruits that I leave for the birds. Every year a flock of sociable Cedar Waxwings visits my tree, to enjoy the luscious berries, and I look forward to their annual visit. The weeping form is only 8 feet tall, so any garden can afford space for it; check in the nursery so that you select a mulberry that will produce fruit.

In these crazy times of over zealous neatness and alienation from nature, a market has developed for fruitless trees, which are widely sold. Please buy trees that yield fruit!

Fall fruit is essential for migrating birds, as they gather strength for their long hours of flying, and winter persistent fruit helps birds that tough it out in your area over the winter. Select some winter persistent food source plants, like crabapple, snowberry, sumacs, native bittersweet, viburnums, Eastern wahoo, and winterberry (Holly). The scarlet berries of holly are an important winter food for birds, and appear only on female plants. It is best to plant holly in groups of several female plants and a male plant, labeled at the nursery.

Include nut and acorn trees, which give your garden cooling summer shade, and nesting and food sources for birds. Migrating birds in fall will treasure oak, hickory, buckeye, chestnut, butternut, walnut, hazelnut and every nut tree that grows in your area.

Plant with the needs of songbirds in mind, and your garden will be a welcome refuge for them, and for you.

About the Author: For more of Terra Hangen's garden tidbits, fun garden photos of her black squirrel friend, tips for beginning writers, and a glimpse into her own journey as a writer visit her blog at http://terragarden.blogspot.com. She is celebrating the publication of her first book, Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts, written with 6 Christian writer friends, and scheduled for publication Oct. 2008 by Leafwood Publishers.